Roger Daltrey of The Who says he is so deaf he now lip-reads. 'Tommy, can you hear me?'

Photo by Misael Virgen / San Diego Union-Tribune

Roger Daltrey (left) and Pete Townshend, the two surviving members of The Who, are shown performing at San Diego's Valley View Casino Center in 2016. At his Saturday concert in Las Vegas, Daltrey, 74, said he is "very, very deaf."

Roger Daltrey (left) and Pete Townshend, the two surviving members of The Who, are shown performing at San Diego's Valley View Casino Center in 2016. At his Saturday concert in Las Vegas, Daltrey, 74, said he is "very, very deaf." (Photo by Misael Virgen / San Diego Union-Tribune)

At almost every concert by The Who since the late 1960s, Roger Daltrey has performed “Pinball Wizard,” with its tell-tale line: “That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.” It’s the best known song from “Tommy,” The Who’s classic 1969 rock opera.

Now, in an ironic twist, Daltrey, 74, is — in his words — “very, very deaf.”

So deaf, in fact, that he lip reads and uses monitors in both of his ears to be able to follow the music on stage. And so deaf he is now encouraging concertgoers to wear hearing protection in order to avoid later needing hearing aids themselves.

“The trouble with the​se ear things that I wear is that I am very, very deaf. And I advise you all — all you rock-and-roll fans — take your f---ing ear plugs to the gigs. If only we had known when we were young​ ... we ​are lip-reading,” Daltrey told the audience at his solo show Saturday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, according to a report in the English newspaper The Mirror.

Daltrey, who is scheduled to perform tonight at the Bob Hope Theatre in Stockton, plans to release a new solo album in June. The same month will see him embark on a 13-city U.S. tour that will feature him performing the “Tommy” album live with orchestras.

Who co-founder Pete Townshend, 72, has wrestled with hearing problems for decades and, according to Daltrey, now wears hearing aids in both of his ears.

In a 1989 Union-Tribune interview, Townshend did not not blame the loud volume of the music at The Who’s concerts for his hearing loss. Instead, he attributed his problems to using amped-up head phones while playing and listening to music late at night at his home in London, back in the late 1960s and 1970s,

When The Who embarked on its 25th anniversary reunion tour in 1989, Townshend played only acoustic guitar at first. He was surrounded on stage by plexiglass, the better to protect himself from the volume produced by the band’s other members.

He gradually discovered that, if he kept the volume on his side of the stage to 98 decibels, or — as he told the Union-Tribune at the time — “about the level of a loud, fairly squawky hi-fi,” he could leave his plexiglass sound booth without any discomfort and play electric guitar at least part of the time.

“We have to define our limits,” he noted. “I'm surprised at what we've been able to do this time."

In 1994, Daltrey told the Union-Tribune that Who bassist John Entwistle — who died in 2002— wore a hearing aid in each of his ears.

“We laugh, but it's very serious,” Daltrey said at the time, before adding a politically incorrect quip. “But I think that (deafness) was (caused by Entwistle's) two (former) wives, not the volume of the music."

In 2011, Daltrey told the Daily Mail newspaper: “Pete is almost stone deaf. He deafened himself in the recording studio, and when we last performed he had to stand right next to the speakers to hear anything.”

Townshend and Daltrey both attended the 1992 opening of “The Who’s ‘Tommy’ ” at the La Jolla Playhouse. Townshend, while delighted at how well the musical did, complained that the volume of the stage band for “Tommy” was far softer than he thought it should be.

Earlier this year, fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Eric Clapton disclosed he is also beset with major hearing issues. Other rock legends whose hearing has been afflicted include Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Ozzy Osbourne and AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, who was warned by doctors that he could lose all his hearing if he did not stop touring.

“It's definitely taken a toll,” Beck told the Union-Tribune in a 1999 interview, in which he discussed receiving extensive therapy and using special ear inserts to mask the sounds in his head caused by his hearing damage.

“I was in big, big trouble. I didn't think I could handle it,” he said. “To have something in your head, a constant noise, it's probably the most horrendous thing a musician could have, not to mention anyone else. But they train you that what annoys your hearing is normal sounds, like the blood flowing through your head, something you never noticed before. There's no pills. It's just therapy I'm getting. And sleep has a lot to do with it. Bad sleep will make it louder, but not worse. I've been trained not to say `worse.' I will try and help anyone who asks. Right now, I hear it screaming away in my head. I'm midway through the therapy.

“I had one therapist who was a bit tactless. He said I had similar hearing loss to an artillery gunner in World War II. But if that's the case, why have all the drummers I've played with all these years not suffered? They're the ones where all the noise comes from. I wouldn't play at a painful level on my amp; that would be unthinkable. But every time he hits a drum, the drummer is closest to the noise. I'm mystified why drummers aren't screaming in pain.”